> > Bill, I don't think any of us can predict the future of the PC > > world. > > Python may very well be the best bet among today's choices, but five or > > ten years from now - who can say what the Next Big Thing will be? > > Yet you continue to call for people to back a proprietary product > owned by a company that clearly has no interest in promoting said > product. But you have no problem calling Python's OS compatibility a > "gamble".
I believe everything in the PC world is a gamble, including VFP. But we already have VFP and the tons of effort it took to get this far have been spent. Now, we can sell VFP products and services for a long time without writing another check to MS. I'm not pursuing new MS stuff (no .NET for me), and I really don't feel any ties to MS at all. I look at VFP as an island, set free by MS with the caveat that it will run unimpeded on Windows for the next 8 years - and I think/hope longer. I'm not looking to promote MS, believe me. The only MS attachment I ever felt was to the VFP team. Okay, thinking about this some more, I guess what I'm hoping to see at some point down the road is a programmatic converter to whatever the Next Big Thing is going to be. I don't know if with Dabo you are thinking along these lines, but folks like me with products have huge libraries of code (a quick tally shows 50 megs of code, classes and forms alone). Even thinking about another re-write at this point would give me a headache, so it's either an automatic converter or 'stay the course'. So, from this position, I need reasons to be optimistic - and I'm finding enough to work with. I'm really not thinking about the MS involvement at all, but the market, and even if we have only a small piece of it, it's a big pie. It's also very relevant that some 90% or more of the world's PC's are running Windows, last time I saw stats. That means (my, at least) typical customer is almost assuredly going to be running Windows. I think you're ahead of the curve with Python/Dabo, which is a good place to be if you can afford it. I believe you've said that your income producing stuff is still VFP, so if you can handle it all, you should be in good shape. I also look up to you guys because you're doing a lot more then I'm capable of. Bill > -- Ed Leafe _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
